When you have children and
grandchildren, and have been established (v’noshantem, literally “you
shall become old”) in the Land for a
long time, you might become decadent and make a statue of some image,
committing an evil act in the eyes of God your Lord and making Him angry. Deuteronomy 4:25
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The
Torah warns against Israel becoming complacent about being in its Land.
Naḥmanides
comments that the verse warns Israel not to forget that it is dependent upon Divine
supervision. Israel’s complacence in its
Land will result from or lead to forgetting God. In a variant upon this
exposition of the verse, Alshikh comments that there is a risk that
Israel will fail to appreciate that “the Earth is God’s and the fullness
thereof” [Psalms 24:1], and therefore come to believe “it is my own strength and personal power that brought me all
this prosperity.” [Deuteronomy
8:17]
Ḥizkuni
suggests that the risk is for Israel to feel that it has achieved permanence in
its Land and can never be exiled from her.
Tzror
haMor casts the problem as a matter of failure to appreciate God’s
beneficence to Israel. Similarly, Panim Yafot explains that after living
for generations in its Land, Israel will come to forget God’s greatness in
looking after His nation, taking them from enslavement into a “good and
spacious Land”. [Exodus 3:8]
Netziv
comments that as long as the experience of entering the Land was relatively
fresh, (the generations of the “children and grandchildren”), there would
continue to be the realization that the conquest of the Land was guided by God
Himself, while “becoming old in the Land” carries the danger that Israel will
begin to believe that their Land functions solely on the basis of the laws of
nature which apply to all lands.
Rabbi
Shimshon Raphael Hirsch writes: there is a great danger in the situation of
becoming complacent in the Land, to becoming accustomed to an easy life in a
Land blessed with all good things. This can lead to forgetting all the miracles
which God performed from the time He brought Israel out of Egypt until He
brought them into their Land. Rabbi Hirsch adds: it is for this reason that
numerous mitzvot are connected to “remembering,” lest we become
ungrateful.
To
“become old in the Land” implies losing the feeling of excitement, of the
emotional sensation of being in our own Land, in the place which God chose for
His people. With the feeling of complacency comes a failure to experience
renewal within the Land. Rabbi Menashe Klein suggests that it is this failure
to experience renewal which will lead to becoming decadent, and notes that our
Sages [Midrash Lekaḥ Tov, Exodus 13:11] taught concerning the Land of
Israel: “it should not be in your eyes as an inheritance from your fathers,
rather as if were given to you this day.”
It
is certainly not by chance that our Sages included this verse as part of the
Torah reading on the Ninth of Av. The first disastrous event of the Ninth of Av
was Israel’s rejection of its Land in response to the majority report of Moses’
spies. This clearly was an expression of lack of gratitude to God, Who had
promised to bring His nation out of Egyptian bondage into “a good and spacious
Land, a Land flowing milk and honey.”[Exodus 3:8] Despite this promise the
generation of the exodus despised the “desired Land” [Midrash Lekaḥ Tov
108a]. The Torah reading of Tish’a b’Av serves as a warning against
repeating the sin of the spies. We must not be ungrateful for the great gift
God has given us, the Land of Israel. Through appreciating the gift of the
Land, we can rectify the sin of the spies.
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